The mysterious farm on the University of Waterloo north campus

Back in 1990, when I was living in the columbia lake townhoses at the University
of Waterloo, I remember having taken a picture of a farm not far from where
I lived. Years later, looking at the black and white print, I could't
figure out where that might have been. There was no farm on the UW
north campus, and there was no other farms nearby.

The whole thing seemed a bit shrouded in mystery. Especially with
me having only the one black and white picture, which I had taken with a
telephoto lens through a slight fog.

I was
gazing at my topographical maps, when I noticed that on the north campus,
not far from the columbia lake townhouses, there WAS some buildings marked
on the map, where now there was none. And the map I was looking at
was not outrageously old, so I was pretty sure that that must have been the
farm that I'd photographed back in 1990. On the map at right, the crosshairs
in the middle of the picture is on the marked buildings.

So I programmed those coordinates into my GPS receiver and headed out to
the spot.

The farm wasn't there anymore, but the trees still where. The spot
where the farm was was just plowed over, with no clues as to where even the
foundations had stood. This only got me more curious.

Using my old photograph as a guide, I found roughly the direction from where
I had taken the picture in 1990, and took another picutre, this time digitally,
and in colour. The trees look surprisingly the same as they did in
1990, but the farm buildings seem to be vanished without a trace.

Although
I didn't put much hope in it, I did try a google search to see if it would
turn up any clue. I searched for "University of Waterloo north campus
farm". Sifting through various links, I came across some PDFs of the
UW campus's master plan from 1992 at
http://www.uwaterloo.ca/documents/masterplan/
. In there I found a map of the north campus, as of 1992. This
map was a bit more detailed than the topographical map, and showed three instead
of two buildings at the site of the farm. This map also shows the planned
westmount road extension. Preparatory work for this was done in the
late 1980's. There are signs indicating "A regional road will be constructed
here", dated 1995. Fortunately, not much has happened since, at least
not at the site. I hope that road never happens. Note because
I care about that spot so much, but because I don't like more roads. The
only thing that keeps people from driving more and working further from their
homes is traffic congestion, so building more roads just leads to people
driving further.

I later found this awesome website with aerial photos of Waterloo region
at http://locator.region.waterloo.on.ca
This is unfortunately one of those evil pages that requires Internet explorer
to fully function, but its a lot of fun to browse.

On the
black and white aerial photos, taken some time in 2000, you can see where
the farm house had once stood, but traces of the other two buildings
are pretty much nonexistent.
The driveway is still in use for driving tractors into the fields.

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Looking
at the colour photographs, the farm was still there. Obviously, that photo
had been taken much earlier. By checking the state of various properties
around town in the colour photographs, I was able to determine that the date of
the colour photograph was some time in 1993.
The green strip on the right is the prepared road bed for the westmount
road extension. There's just grass growing in it at this point, which
is why its so green on the photo.

And that's all I know about that farm. I just have a morbid fascination
with old ruins and things like that, and I figured maybe somebody else might
find it interesting too.

I put a Geocache near the site of this farm, becauase I think its an interesting spot.

Update 2005

The mentioned road past the farm has unfortunately been built and opened in the fall of 2004.
I'm sure its great progress in terms of releiving congestion elsewhere, but its sad to see
more land turned into roads.

The spot is no longer suitable for a geocache, so the cache is no longer.